Grievances

subheading

Saturday, January 30, 2016

3:23am - It has has officially started. By officially, I mean that my mother finally went to bed. I started drinking like, an hour an a half ago, out of boredom. Just need to endure the brain-melting blasts of his space heater, until he gets out of the bathroom and I can beg for a reprieve.

3:26am - Seriously, it's Africa hot in here.

3:31am - He's still in the bathroom. Fuck this. I'm playing Iggy Azalea.

3:37am - He has emerged. I asked him if it was a satisfying experience. He mentioned listening to "tasty tunes." I told him his heater had melted my face. He claimed it was an improvement.

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7:13am - So this just happened - I was trying to show my ex-husband (since he is up at this hour) this new fun thing, and I failed:

My picture editing is everything.

8:30am - As step dad is playing No Doubt, I will share yet another Mad Libs we did together:

Road Trip!

One day my Uncle the guy from No Doubt who died, and my Aunt Caitlyn Jenner said they would take me and my sister Dolly Parton's boob on a trip to THE GREAT STATE OF NEW JERSEY.
“You will love THE GREAT STATE OF NEW JERSEY,” said Aunt Caitlyn Jenner. “It is famous for its wild the un-mockable African pygmies, its Jets green flowers, and its beautiful tripping balls hills.”

“I hope you packed plenty of stale french fries for the ride,” said Uncle the guy from No Doubt who died. “It will probably take us 5 or whatever hours.”

So we all piled into Uncle the guy from No Doubt who died and Aunt Caitlyn Jenner's unicycle. At first the trip was really plum stupid. We sang “fifthry billyord Bottles of Bud Lite on the Wall.” Then we counted the puke that we saw knee rubbing in the fields by the side of the road. But after 1 hours we had eaten all the stale french fries and Dolly Parton's boob was getting really really, like rilly stupid.

“Are we almost there?” she asked with extreme Jewishness.
“Yes, Skippy,” said Aunt Caitlyn Jenner.

Just then I saw a sign that said, “Staten Island: 2 miles.”
“Umm, Uncle the guy from No Doubt who died, is Staten Island on the way to THE GREAT STATE OF NEW JERSEY?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Dolly Parton's boob, pointing, “and is The Staten Island place where I lost my phone on the way to THE GREAT STATE OF NEW JERSEY?”

“That's A Good Loose Meat Sandwich, kids,” laughed Uncle the guy from No Doubt who died. “You can trust the expert.”

“One thing's for sure,” I muttered. “I don't think we're in New Jersey! any more.”

-----

I am so sorry about this. This is a very ... something Drunkfest.

9:14am - This night has been weird, but not a failure, since I convinced my step dad that new music, such as Blue October, Lana Del Rey and Milo Greene is way cool.

9:20am - Step dad wants to pack up pack it in, let me begin. Wait, okay, he said he wants to hit she sheets. Which means I will finish this beer, grab my hoagie leftovers and some water and have a nippity nap. Sorry it wasn't a weirder night, kittens. But Drunkfest is what the night demands.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

How did it go for everyone? Just tell me in your minds, I can hear you.

It was a very different Christmas this year, which started on Christmas Eve. Boyfriend traditionally spends the night at his sister and brother-in-law's house - since I really enjoy them both, I was like, "me too?" and I was permitted access. It was that evening I realized there is no one on this planet who loves decorating for this holiday more than boyfriend's sister. Every inch of her abode was festooned and swagged and stuffed to brimming with cheerful lights and decor. It was amazing. I was fatigued just looking at it.

I was even more exhausted the next day, due to forgetting to beg boyfriend before he fell asleep to turn off a few hundred lights, because attempting sleep on her very comfy couch was like attempting sleep on the very sun. I was myself afraid to touch a thing, lest my penchant for lacking grace should topple everything into a desperate mess.

Christmas day itself was fairly typical, except for homes requiring air conditioning in the ding dang winter. Presents, naps, beer for breakfast - one might call it a day like any other, except with Christmas cookies.

My mom was working on Christmas, so we all had to wait until the following Monday to celebrate with her and my stepdad when she finally had a day off. We went out for some shitty Mexican food, had a few drinks, then re-assembled back at my sister's house to open gifts.

Among other treats, I got underwear. Good news is, I want underwear.

After
arriving back at boyfriend's, we sat outside for a bit, when he suddenly fell prey to a concomitant case of
phlegm and pernicious hiccups. I took one look at his face and
implored him to face away from me immediately, and boy, am I smart,
because his dinner found its way out of his body and down the porch steps.

We decided it was time to retire to bed, which was fine by me, since I felt a rainy-day headache looming hard. He got slipped into the bed first, where I heard him exclaim curses with a measure of bemused distress. I walked over to discover not one, but two liberal wet spots and more cat shit than I care to recall in detail. By the time we made it into a clean bed, cats kicked the hell out of the room for the night with as stern a glare I could manage, and I took my requisite "just laid down for a few, now it's time to pee of course" trip to the bathroom, I returned to bed to discover I had a full-on, head-threatening-to-explode migraine. I also found myself without a belly full of Mexican food, or any fluids I tried desperately to retain, by the time I mercifully fell asleep in the gloomy twilight.

The lesson here is try new traditions on Christmas, definitely, but not the ones that leave you barfing and cats shitting all over your stuff.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Hello again old readers, new readers, and people named Fred who I will always call "Freeeeedrick" in my mind-voice.

I've spent much of the past year and more thinking in my brain, sitting here in my old bedroom with the crappy, boringly-painted paneling I somehow decided I needed when I was a teenager.

My bedroom walls were so bad when we moved to this house when I was 14 that I spent countless, fruitless hours listening to They Might Be Giants, trying to remove the layers of paint and wallpaper - and in the end, applying paneling actually seemed like a sane solution. Do not do this to your home, unless you never intend to drill a hole or hang a picture, because damn. My bedroom would be the only room in this house to survive a nuclear war.

But I'm very glad to be back here in New Jersey, despite the herculean efforts it took to convince the state to give me my driver's license back. This place has hoagies everywhere. All is forgiven.

One of my first memories of being back home was wallowing under my covers in the early evening, praying for cataclysmic force majeure, only to have my baby sister bounce loudly and cheerfully into my room unannounced, insisting I put some pants on, tie up the grease I stored on top of my head into a ponytail, and go with her to a get-together populated by airsoft friends of hers whom I'd never met. I had no choice, she's extremely stronger than me.

While there, I drank a shot of some manner of home-made mushroom-infused alcohol on a dare, to prove that nothing scared me anymore. Trust me on this - don't at all consider doing that. It's been a year since this happened to my body, and I still gag thinking about it.

A lot of my time in this room was spent being impossibly miserable - my YouTube history is proof - and then finally, mercifully, I had a project in the form of the job I started doing for the Airsoft/LARP game company. I no longer formally work for my old boss, mostly because I was making about zero dollars, and after awhile that gets disheartening and makes you want to yell all the time because it sucks having to ask your mom for tampon money when you are actually spending 12 or more hours a day working on something for another person's dream. No hard feelings between old boss and I, though.

But back to all the thinking. For the first time in my life I started to become happy being single, and often wondered if I should just stay that way for the duration. I reached a point where I absolutely refused to consider anything serious unless the guy was actually a box of kittens trained to meow my name.

One boring Friday night about six months ago, when I was in the mood to dosomething of a social nature for once (I know, I was even sober when I had that desire), a male friend of mine I hadn't seen in like, ten freaking years messaged me. Long story severely truncated, I have a boyfriend, despite the fact I can't convince him to meow my name, not even once, no matter how much I beg.

Since I would insist upon informations about a person's new kitten or non-kitten acquisition, I present thee with trivia about him:

1. He is so tall.
2. He cannot whistle. (Proof he is not a bird.)
3. He bought me my nose ring when I was 26 years old.
4. He has never eaten Arby's
5. He never reads my blog, the jerk, despite an agreement we made awhile ago that if I read one of his favorite books, he'd read my original Sims Legacy. Cut to me reading about ten of the books on his shelf, and he still remains only five chapters into the legacy.
6. I dated his brother for a year and a half, 15 years ago.
7. Yep, I just slipped that in there, like no big whoop.

So, that's what's been up. After noticing a sudden surge in likes on my Facebook page, I decided I should put something on this damned blog, since I'd never intended to stop writing, I just got into a weird mood and the longer I didn't write, the more the idea of writing even a grocery list to post here seemed terrifying. But if you're going to the market, I need more frozen pizza. The good kind!

As your reward for tolerating my absence and reading all those words, I give you:

Movie Summaries (as written by a creature from another planet who hasn't seen the film and sometimes doesn't even have the right poster).

Interracial gay couple overcome their fears of marathons through dance and Vespa therapy.

Used car salesman has one more car left to sell to make his quota for the month or his boss is just gonna kill him.

Color blind friends are sure you made them this way and they will not stand for it.

In a world where the whims of gravity are unpredictable, one brave
young man is on a quest for a better life through core strength.

Because I love you all so much, I have more!
Due to the fact that I didn't really have a proper workaday job, I ended up doing a ton of favors for people, one of which was cat-sitting for my sister more than once.
﻿

This is her punk-ass cat, Val. He's a little pissed off that after chewing on my
wrist for no good reason, I guffawed when he accidentally fell off the couch.

The last time I was equally abused and loved-on by her jerk cat was a long weekend, and she made the mistake of leaving me nothing to eat, but plenty of beer to amuse myself with. The result was a series of Post-it notes I left around her house. Enjoy.

One of those moments you wish you had filled your purse with googly eyes, like you always promised yourself you would.

She got a box of doilies from her work friend's mom and she
barely has an inch of house surface left un-doilied.

How else am I supposed to react?

I really, really hate that thing.

Keep in mind, beer was involved in these notes.

It's a good thing I don't just drink any old thing left in someone's fridge.

The errant cheese stick was discovered several weeks later by my sister's boyfriend.

That one wine cork left outside of the containment field haunts my dreams.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

I didn't actually play, I was there as a game reporter (an unarmed
observer who films footage of the action and does interviews) - it's the
non-administrative side of my job I'd been dreading since the moment I
was informed I had to do it.

I'm guessing that to some
of you who read this blog, the idea of me wearing a tactical vest and
goggles, and drinking water I was wearing on my own back in the middle
of a field with 70 guys shooting at each other might seem like my
natural habitat, but I was so far out of my element I couldn't even see
the periodic table.

It all started the day before the
game, when I tremulously drove from NJ to PA to pick up the boss, then
head up to NY. (He has no depth perception, or peripheral vision. No, I
don't intentionally sneak up on him - he was in the special forces, and I'm not a fan of head locks.)

We
made a quick visit to the field, then checked into the motel where we
were staying. There were errands to run, hydration bladders to buy and
decisions to make about what to unplug in the room so we could charge
phones and camera batteries, etc. At this point, my growing panic was
reasonably in check - only one of my ears was leaking blood, and I could
still feel my face.

The moment I considered shanking my cellmate for sitting on MY bed.

That night, the boss had to adjust the tactical vest I was borrowing
from him, to fit me properly. The resulting anxiety caused what am I now
sure was internal organ swelling and temporary color blindness - I
wanted it off, now.

Later in the
evening, the bodyguard assigned to me - his primary job in the game was
CAVT (control and verification team) - met us at the motel with a friend
in tow. I went to jump into the shower, and the second my clothes were off, my boss is knocking at the door to tell me they're here already. Awesome.

I
get out of the bathroom, already in full "well this is an awkward."
mode, (because even ordinary situations are awkward to me) and my boss
is on the phone, unable to properly introduce us. I'm holding my dirty
underwear wrapped in a dirty shirt, staring longingly at the corner of
the room where my stuff is, which was being blocked by my bed and two
tall guys I'd never spoken to. I stood there for 30 minutes (or seconds)
like a jackass before I decided to toss the stuff toward my bag.

Where it promptly decided to separate and display itself expertly on the tactical vest. Fabulous.

Thanks, Asshole.

~~~~~

After exactly zero minutes of sleep, and my newly-decided morning
ritual of winging pillows at the window until I ran out (then collecting
them to start again) the boss and cranky me arrived at the field a
couple of hours before the game started. He took me on a brief tour
through the village and through the trees, to where the battle would
start at the beach landing site (it was based on the Falklands war).
This was the first time I'd ever walked through a wooded area and felt a
desperate urge to fake a seizure and subsequent inability to speak my
own language.

Back at staging, I asked the boss if he
needed me to retrieve the pvc poles he'd brought as a prop from the car
for him. In front of a small handful of guys I did not know, he said,
"Yes. Just try not to dance on them." I came back with the poles and
said, "I managed not to dance on them, just try not to get one stuck up
your ass."

That was the first and final time that day I was myself.

When the game began, I had been awake for 36 hours. Right before I put on my gear and got on the field, I sent this message to a good friend:

"I have never been more ready to cry into my own vomit than I am right now."

I want my mommy.

I got to the beach landing site, weighed down by gear and feeling
like I was wearing a bunny costume to a black tie dinner, and asked my
bodyguard, "Where should I stand?" He pointed vaguely. I positioned
myself in a vague manner, and waited until smoke filled the field, bomb
sound effects began and guys started pouring out of the "boats" shooting
at unseen other guys in the woods.

As I squatted,
camera in hand, I realized that the foreign sound I was hearing were BBs
plinking all around me in the dry weeds. It was more surreal than scary
- one of the fears I didn't have about doing the job was getting
shot, which is what everyone else assumed was the reason I couldn't
function as a sane person that day. I just couldn't believe I was right
in the middle of it, and nothing was hitting me.

I sent this text to my sister (who used to regularly play airsoft) 30 minutes before I ate an expired Slim Jim:

"Airsoft is a TOTAL and UTTER nope for me. I tried. No. All the nos. Every no that has ever been or ever will be."

Please wait to shoot me until after I learn German so I can properly explain how equal parts bored and terrified I am first.

It is impossible for me to over-state the hell every single second of
this was to me. I have crushing social anxiety, and I was wearing gear
that made me feel like an dumbass, stuck on a field with dozens of
strangers, with absolutely no freaking idea what I was doing. I wanted
off that field even before I stepped onto it - making it three hours
before I said, "I'm going back to staging, fuck all of this in the ear."
was a testament to my will-power. Not weeping and demanding someone
carry me off the field was a god damned miracle, what with the screams
of my soul's imminent death ringing in my ears. This isn't to say there
wasn't crying. There were definitely tears.

~~~~~

By
the time I quit, I had over eight hours of sitting there until game
end, knowing that I still had to drive from NY to PA and then back to
Jersey. I was so sleep-deprived and done with it that it felt as
though my skin was peeling in sheets and scuttling off chortling. I had
been using nearly all of my mental and physical energy just to appear as
if I was simply a conscious human living her own personal nightmare, so
I had a prayer of getting us home safely.

Once it was
finally, mercifully over, my brain was so crispy I could barely manage
the complexities of driving while existing in my body. I could have been
pissing myself while my boss punched me in the kidneys and I doubt I
would have noticed, for the amount of concentration I had to put into
not running red lights and sitting at green ones (both happened).

I
like my boss, seriously. But I had a few moments on the ride home where
I considered merely slowing in front of his home and kicking him out
the door along with his gear.

The only time I
laughed that entire day was on the drive home when the boss told me my
sister's review of her very first airsoft game: "I'm not saying anyone on that field was gay ... but that was the gayest thing I've ever done."

I
don't think airsoft itself is terrible, and the game was very
well-written and orchestrated - I saw almost everyone leave (due to
choosing a folding chair by the exit and making it mine) and they were
thrilled to damned death with it. Airsoft is awesome, for someone who
wants to hang out in the woods sweating through their camo and chasing
ticks off themselves. If this is how you have fun, and you're in the
northeast, I have the information you need to make this happen for you. I can also get you a good deal on rip-stop pants, vests and goggles.

I leave you with what a friend said to me after recounting my day to them, including the expired Slim Jim lunch.

"As my blood thickens and my heart stops, my only regret is that I was here."

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

As a single girl who sleeps very poorly, I get bored a lot, so I end up on Omegle at odd hours, with a beer in hand. I've had a few great convos there, like the night I laughed until I cried while three dudes from Texas acted like three dudes from Texas.

But as anyone who's been there can tell you, it's pretty much hit or miss, miss, miss, miss. Much of the time, I end up talking to a young man who assumes that me moving to Skype with them to chat verbally without Omegle's soundtrack of what must be robots tussling means that later, despite how very clothed I remained, and non-sexual our first conversation was, I want them to tell me every single time they feel a boner approaching.

I actually suspect that I could conduct this first conversation while wearing another person as my hat, and talking about nothing but my collection of stolen left socks I took from former lovers and still yield the same results.

I do expect and accept that guys, especially the younger ones, will ask to see my boobs when they meet me on video chat. It's okay, I get it. But how many times do you have to say no before it lands in a part of their brain where it's understood as an actual no?

Is deigning to spend time with me in conversation seen as some sort of currency to be exchanged for flashing my tits or fielding conversation about the pressure in his balls?

I am learning so much about men in my year of being single. Here's an example:

Wait for it ...

Everyone, just think about that sentence. "You should see what I can do with my ass hole."
Allow it to echo in your mind. It's impossible to respond to immediately.

"like a baby"!? What published work is telling men to use that phrase anywhere near a statement about their genitals?

Yep, "crimson tide" tore it for me. I've reached the point where I can no longer muster
the energy to help guide him out of the depths of uninspired futility.

I've now given you all the formula for getting a child down for a nap. Exhaust them with word salads.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

I always feel guilty when a Tuesday passes and I don't have something to post here. I've been busy, but I've belabored that point. Once I have more free time, I do plan to get back on the blog ball.

So there's not much going on in my life that anyone really wants to hear about, since it's all stuff about trying to build a website and store, and make sure my associate/boss-type-person isn't using "as" for "has" all over the website, because he's English and can't help that shit at all.

The rest of my life involves conversations with my sons and ex-husband. So that's what you're getting, and you can like it or lump it (as my junior high science teacher loved to say).

As I mentioned in the comments on the groovy-ass blog Simian Idiot, my six-year-old son hates being asked questions that do not relate to precisely the subject he wants to discuss at that moment and probably for at least the next hour. His reactions range from physically waving the question away, to exasperated body twisting and sighs to facial expressions that resemble some sort of fugue.

His personality is a constant source of amusement for his father and me.

me: Did you eat dinner already?6-yr-old: *stares into space, squirms* I don't know.me: You don't know if you just ate a meal within the last hour?6-yr-old: ...no. Why do Delta cargo planes never carry passengers?

Next time he wants to talk about Delta, I'll have more questions than answers.

Just this past weekend, I asked him if he was doing any math in school.

6-yr-old: Can not predict now.

His father explained this answer was due to their Magic 8 Ball. He apparently asks the thing the same question every day: "Am I going to die this week?"

6-yr-old: And it always sometimes says, "yes"!

~~~~~

Their dad just took them to Seaworld, where they sat in the splash zone for Shamu. Apparently, they avoided getting wet, which caused the younger brother (aged 5) to complain bitterly. Sounds about right for a child who was born a grumpy old man. It's 80 degrees where he lives, and he insists on wearing long sleeves. He just asked me a few days ago if I'd heard of and liked Simon and Garfunkle. When he gets home from school, he puts on a dress shirt, pants, vest and tie.

This sounds like I'm merely trying to stress a point, but these are un-embellished facts.

Little brother also likes to argue. His dad told him he should be a lawyer when he grows up, because of his love for arguing, and he for reals responded, "I do not love to argue!" But this is the same child who made a robot out of a box and named it "Robox", so we're probably not going to sell him to gypsies yet. Not even despite that he says that when he grows up he's going to open the Hitler Airport. Don't get too concerned, he also wants to open The Little Rascal's Airport.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

When I wake up in the morning, I just want some fucking coffee. I don't want to be presented with a riddle, or a project, or a game of chance. I want a hot, strong cup and 15 minutes to attempt to encourage my thinky brain to catch up with my instinctive brain, which only wants to run at the first living thing and kill it when my alarm goes off.

The Hamilton Beach Flexbrew has distinctively different ideas about how my mornings should begin.

Yeah, this is the fucker.

Oooh, I brew pots and single cups! No you don't.

We used to have a Mr. Coffee single-cup brewer and it was trusty. The Hamilton Beach Flexbrew was a Christmas gift from my step-dad to my mom, meant to clear some premium counter-space, presumably so he could fill it up with a pop-up toaster to be friends with our toaster oven. Their kitchen is a menagerie of contrapshits and accoutre-junks.

Some background: step-dad prefers to brew a pot of half-caf and for all intents and purposes, insert a straw. Mom likes a cup at a time, sometimes regular, sometimes half-caf - which always results in us having an over-abundant supply of pointless sucka MC coffee pods rattling around - but lest I divide my ire today, let's stick to talking about what I've dubbed "The Asshole of Coffeemakers".

We'll start with my lesser gripes:

It has no fill-line for the individual cups of coffee. It has a window on the side which ostensibly is meant to show you how much water you're pouring in, but trust me, it's as useless as ovaries on a boyfriend. You gotta pre-measure that agua. Might as well rustle up a batch of french toast at 6am.

The drip-tray doesn't remove. I'd be angrier about this if I were the one tasked with removing stale, tepid coffee from the unit via siphon. But whoever thought that one up in the boardroom definitely moonlights as a total jerk.

If you don't press that coffee pod directly down in one dextrous, practiced movement, you're getting a crunchy coffee-ground surprise, because Hamilton Beach is a fussy mistress.

Finally, the doozlehopper you stick the pod into has many moving, yet seemingly non-removing parts which makes cleaning some sort of Russian Roulette hand acrobatics where you wait for the day when you slice a soap-slippery finger jiggling about, if you don't have the foresight and planning to get it into a dishwasher load. But again - not my circus, not my monkeys.

Now, the real reason I'm here: getting a single, consistent cup of coffee in a timely fashion is a distant memory if you purchase this small electronic appliance.

With most of the single-cup brewers I've dealt with, you press start and walk away (or slump in a quivering, desperate heap) to wait until the machine stops groaning to know you've got some coffee. The Hamilton Beach Flexbrew expects you to walk away and go fuck yourself.

It thinks it's really clever, too - with its adorable little beep to let you know coffee consumption is nigh. It lies to you. All too often, that cup isn't even one-quarter brewed when that beep occurs. Sure, sometimes your cup is perfect, and when that rare magic happens, you tell everyone you know that you've been gifted with the only thing you ever wanted: a hot, delicious singly-brewed cup of coffee in less than 20 minutes.

I've done experiments - albeit caffeine-fueled, fist-banging German ones. It doesn't care what brand of coffee pod you use, it doesn't care how much water you've incrementally measured out - it doesn't care how desperately you beg. It is simply filled with gremlins.

So if what you desire is to be soundly dominated by a machine first thing in the Christly morning - or any hour of day, for that matter - bring a box of k-cup - any brand, as long as it's caffeinated - to my home and run away screaming with this thing. I'm going to tell my parents that fairies did it. I'll even throw in a slightly-used pop-up toaster. We're going to need the counter space when I drag up the old coffee makers from the basement.